City parent defended by 'worst mom'

Abandonment case continues

'Worst mom' Lenore Skenazy is a New York-based writer who founded the Free-Range Kids movement.

Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/1/2015 (1963 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Was a Winnipeg mom wrong to leave her six-year-old son home alone for 90 minutes?

Or are police and justice officials acting like helicopter parents?

Either way, America's worst mom is on her side.

New York City resident Lenore Skenazy says the Winnipeg mom -- who left her son alone in a locked bungalow on a summer afternoon with the TV on and food and water with him -- should not have been charged with child abandonment.

Skenazy said, at most, the mother should have been told "don't do it again."

"Just because something makes you feel uncomfortable or self-righteous doesn't make it dangerous," Skenazy said during a phone interview Tuesday.

"This mother loves her child more than anyone. She knows her child better than the judge, lawyers and police.

"Every parent makes decisions that other parents don't agree with."

Skenazy knows what it's like to be accused of bad parenting.

She made international headlines in 2008 and was dubbed America's worst mom after she gave subway fare to her nine-year-old son so he could fulfil his request of finding his way home by himself.

Since then, Skenazy has written the book Free-Range Kids, is the host of the TV show World's Worst Mom, and has been interviewed by media outlets from around the world. She said free-range kids are treated as smart people who don't need to be watched constantly.

Earlier this week, a Winnipeg mother was on trial after pleading not guilty to child abandonment.

Provincial court Judge Margaret Wiebe was told the woman left her child alone at home for 90 minutes so she could run some errands.

Court was told the child's father -- the parents are separated -- spotted the mom driving alone on Pembina Highway and phoned the home. When the child said he was alone, the dad called police.

The Crown called it abandonment and argued there were numerous ways the child could have been injured or worse while alone, including turning on the stove, choking on food or falling out of a window.

Michael Law, the woman's lawyer, said there was no evidence of potential harm brought forward and said people who had been convicted of the offence in the past had left their children in vehicles during hot summer or cold winter days, or with weapons.

"It must be more than purely speculative," he said.

Skenazy said she doesn't understand why the mother has not seen her son since she was arrested 18 months ago. Law would only say Child and Family Services is involved in the case.

"That's horrific," she said. "How's that in the best interests of the child?"

Skenazy said the court case is one more example of how North American society is too protective of children.

"I was walking to school as a kindergartner. Now you can't ever walk to school when you are 10," she said.

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"What we have done is massively underestimate our children and massively overestimate the danger."

Arthur Schafer, a University of Manitoba professor and the director of the U of M Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, said whatever happens to the Winnipeg woman will be at the discretion of the court and will take into consideration whether harm was intended or negligently risked through her actions and what, if any, punishment there should be.

"The defence that nothing bad came of it, if the child had come to harm, it would have been worse," Schafer said. "Imagine two parents who leave their kids for the same length of time in a locked house in similar circumstances and one house burns down and the other doesn't or in one, the child manages to fall out of a window to its death and the other that doesn't happen. But they could equally have happened so both can be very serious."

If the woman was convicted, Schafer said he would expect any punishment would take into account that the woman hasn't seen her child in 18 months.

"It seems unlikely they'd need to imprison her or fine her heavily. The fact that she has suffered greatly, she's lost custody of her child, she's been stigmatized, she's been charged, even if she's not convicted, might be viewed by the court as sufficient punishment. Or not."

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca

Kevin RollasonReporter

Kevin Rollason is one of the more versatile reporters at the Winnipeg Free Press.
Whether it is covering city hall, the law courts, or general reporting, Rollason can be counted on to not only answer the 5 Ws — Who, What, When, Where and Why — but to do it in an interesting and accessible way for readers.

Readers weigh in

Monday's child abandonment story generated a lively debate on the Free Press website. In fact, things got so heated, we eventually had to turn off comments. Here's a sampling of what commenters were saying:

No excuse for this, but if her child has been taken from her perhaps in this case that might be punishment enough?

-- LOKA

The mother was wrong to leave her child alone for such a long period of time but I imagine these legal proceedings are more than adequate punishment for what she did. Leaving her with a criminal record and jail time served, serves no further purpose.

-- emcee51

What a ridiculous defense; the child didn't get harmed. That's like saying you can drink and drive as long as you don't hit anything on the way home.

-- Everybody Up

I would suspect a lot of laws were broken here. I do think the mother should be found innocent. The child was not harmed by the mothers actions. The child was harmed willfully by denying the mother child bond to continue.

-- Grandiose_delusions

This is the absolute definition of nanny state. I have no idea how humans evolved as far as we have without this sort of government assistance.

-- Time Lord

My parents would have spent their child-rearing lives in jail. "Go to the park and play with your friends." And there we would all gather. Sometimes a parent would be there and sometimes not. Meanwhile there were 50 kids of all ages running around enjoying themselves while unsupervised.

-- beekpr1

I am a little perplexed. At six years of age I was walking by myself to and from school every day (more than one half mile) in temperatures that would frequently drop to -40 degrees. My father would check for wolf or bear prints near the house in the snow before work and then report back to my mother it was fine to let us go to school. My neighbors did more or less the same. Were our parents criminals?

-- Old Flin Flon

Anyone over the age of 25 will remember times when they didn't have a drone hovering over their heads every minute of the day and we came out fine. I walked home from school (as did all of my friends) every day from the time I was in kindergarten till I graduated -- were my parents and my friends' parents guilty of child abandonment? We have to quit imposing our ideas of parenting -- typically ideas created by people of middle-class or higher incomes on everyone else. The rest of the world reads these articles and laughs at us.

-- BillRCA2000

She made a bad decision, and yes, bad things could have happened. They didn't. With all of the real problems in the world, the children who are really abandoned, the unfathomable backlog of our courts and the severe overloading of CFS, how does this case take precedence? Answer: it doesn't. Let it go.

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